New school of indie … from left, Rachel Aggs and Shopping; Nadine Shah; Vagabon; Sacred Paws; Japanese Breakfast and Mal Devisa.

Earlier this year, Dave Longstreth of Dirty Projectors was forced to backtrack on an Instagram post in which he asked if the alternative music scene had become “bad and boujee”. The problem, Longstreth suggested – to Fleet Foxes singer Robin Pecknold of all people – was that indie rock had become too “refined and effete”, detached from “lived, earned experience”. This idea appears to crop up every year: in 2016 MTV asked: “Is indie rock over the white male voice?” and in 2015 Pitchfork looked at the “unbearable whiteness” of indie.

A narrow reading of the release schedule for 2017 would suggest indie remains a tired, homogeneous scene stacked heavily in favour of established, straight, male artists including Father John Misty, Dirty Projectors, Fleet Foxes and Mac DeMarco. Guitar bands remain a mainstay on festival bills, too, with Kasabian, Kings of Leon and the Killers as safe bookings alongside Radiohead, Arcade Fire and Bon Iver. These groups, all of whom could have played the same events at least a decade ago, hardly speak of a genre looking to revive itself through new ideas.

But a number of new artists and a flurry of albums also released in the past year tell a very different story: indie rock and DIY guitar music is more diverse than you thought. This summer brings Nadine Shah’s Holiday Destination, in which she addresses the rise of nationalism in the UK and how, as a Muslim and a second-generation immigrant, the political climate has led her to a “proper identity crisis”. Then there’s Rhode Island-based Latin punks Downtown Boys, who will release their album on Sub Pop in August.

In the past year, we have also heard Everybody Works by Jay Som, an intimate and eclectic album of lo-fi fuzz that has drawn comparisons to Blood Orange and Nick Cave, and queer act Muna, who champion the use of safe spaces and gender-neutral toilets at their live shows, and refuse to adopt the gender pronouns he or she in their songs. Elsewhere, Mitski was a regular spot on last year’s best-of lists with her album Puberty 2, on which she tackled the whiteness of all-American culture with the magnificent single Your Best American Girl. Then there is Vagabon’s Cleaning House, on which Laetitia Tamko sings: “What about them scares you so much? My standing there threatens your standing, too.”

Tamko was attending protests inspired by Black Lives Matter when she wrote the song, which talks about her journey as a teenage immigrant arriving in the US from Cameroon, alongside the need for justice for the deaths of black men Alton Sterling and Michael Brown. When you include bands such as Crying, Aye Nako and the bluesy solo music of the enigmatic Massachusetts artist Mal Devisa, the future of indie looks encouraging.

Speaking from the back of a van between tour stops in Detroit and Toronto, Tamko says the change within the scene is undeniable. “The people who inspire me are the people of colour who are unapologetic about their place in the world,” she says. “Different people from places outside the US have different takes on art and bring a whole new perspective.” Tamko says she felt isolated by the clique-ish indie community she encountered early on, but she refused to compromise in order to fit in. “I wanted to prove to myself that I could be a part of this, but not in a way in which I blended in,” she says. “I wanted to exist there on my terms, and to be seen and to demand respect. A shortcut wasn’t for me.”

Victoria Ruiz of Downtown Boys is similarly uncompromising. Her band has established itself with its intersectional politics and a brand of sax-laced punk that lends itself perfectly to Bruce Springsteen covers. Ruiz, who is Mexican-American, says work by Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar, as well as increasing political consciousness, have boosted the visibility for artists of colour. “Black Lives Matter forced us all to ask why certain people are not on the bill or in the audience. Perhaps it’s that the invitation just wasn’t sent. People tend to ignore the issues they don’t consider their problem, but when these things are being forced, you can’t shy away from it.”

Indie is becoming less white in the UK too, but at a slower pace. Rachel Aggs, a gay, mixed-race, London-based musician, splits her time between DIY punk bands Shopping and Sacred Paws, with whom she released the album Strike a Match in January. She says she regularly plays to all-white crowds at home and that the messages about her heritage in the music can be lost.

“That was subtly demoralising,” she says of feeling ignored. “We thought we were making a statement and nobody wanted to talk about it. We didn’t care, but it was isolating.” She points to London’s Decolonise festival and the work of promoters DIY Diaspora Punx as evidence of a shift. Change, she says, is simple: “More brown people should start bands and more white people should talk about why there’s no brown people at their shows. We can’t be scared of this conversation.”

The Korean-American musician Michelle Zauner, who records as Japanese Breakfast and releases the follow-up to her acclaimed debut this month, admits she is wary that the progress of her peers could be taken as little more than a trend. Speaking from Philadelphia, she says: “I just don’t want to think that women of colour making music is the new chillwave, and next it’s on to cats playing keyboard,” she says. “I read food articles about how Korean food is over and it’s all about Vietnamese and I think, ‘Fuck you. It’s not going anywhere.’ My identity is not your fad. You don’t have to spit it out at some point.”